34 P A TE.I\NITY I WAS far advanced In my train- ing to becomè an internist when, in November, 1929., I established my practIce In Mattersburg, a town of four thousand inhabitants in the Bur- genland province of Austria. I had grown up there, and my longing for my home country remained strong during the years of my absence in Vienna. I was in my last year of residency at the Hospital of the City of Vienna when I learned to my sorrow that old Dr. Frank, the town's ] eWIsh doctor for more than fifty years, had died. The only other doctor in the area-the Gentile doctor- could not provide sufficient medical care for the town and the surround- ing villages and hamlets strewn all over the Rosalia Mountains, and im- pulsIvely I decided to take Dr. Frank's place. Everybody opposed my decision-my friends, my colleagues, and even the almIghty Superintendent of the City HospItals. vVhy exchange the amenities of \Tienna (in 1929 still the world's capItal of music) for life in the woods? My colleagues spoke about my future career as a specialist, and the Superin- tendent, who was a great anatol11ist and also the Health Minister of Vienna, expressed his strong feeling that doc- tors who had been trained under his supervision should become pIllars of socio-111edical planning. StiH, I de- cided to give country practIce at least a trial. I compro111ised; I asked for a half year's leave of absence. When I talked to my fnends en- thusiastIcally about the beauty of Bur- genland and the enormo us serVIces a doctor can perform for country people, they said I was running after a child- hood dream. Was it reaHy true? I re- called Dr. Frank's house in the center of town-a spacious two-story huild- ing, painted egg yellow and huilt around a large courtyard shaded hy walnut trees. The windowsills were filled with pots of geraniums. P'ltients lined up all day in the courtvclrd- Dr. Fr.lnk did not helieve in waiting rooms. The doctor's mysterious of- fice, into which [ sometimes dared to peek, smelled of alcohol, iodine, and dust. It was frugally furnished with a table that served as a desk, two chairs, and a rickety examining table. i\.n old cabinet containing a few instruments stood in a corner. Dr. Frank was a slight man, with a comfortable paunch and a face that seldom smIled. I was alway s happy when he invited me to accompany him on his house calls He would sit re- laxed on the back seat of his carriage, in winter enveloped in a mighty fur coat. It was difficult terntory-from valleys to mountaintops, one house many kilometres from another. Still, Dr Frank said, he would not exchange his practiçe with that of a Nzchtstuer doctor in a CIty. I enjoyed those ex- cursions tremendously. When the snow melted, the whole countryside was sat- urated with green. Fruit trees blos- somed into red, yellow, pink. Soon they would carry apples, pears, apri- cots, plums. Strawberries grew as big as children's fists. And, of course, there were vineyards as far as the eye could see. High on a mountaintop stood the medieval castle of the Duke of Ester- hazy, and around it a virgin forest- chestnut trees and hunting territory. As a medIcal student, I continued to visit the old doctor., but then I saw more than the countryside. There was work at hand for a country doctor. Sicknesses flourished that are all but extinct today. The whole territory was ridden with diphtheria (I can hardly believe it when a young doctor now- adays tell" me that he has never seen one single case of diphtheria); typhoid fever was endemic, kept alive by con- taminated wells; every third person had tuberculosis. Dr. Frank applied splints and plaster casts without X- ray diagnosis. When I remarked on this once, he looked indignant and snapped, "Ð'you see more crippled people here than in your famous Vi- enna? " After Dr Frank's death, I trav- el1ed down to Mattershurg to visit F'rau Frank. I thought of renting Dr. Frank's old office and a couple of rooms in the spacious yellow house, but F'rau Frank told me reluctantly that dP '*' "" dI' she preferred to live her remaInIng years alone in the house. I walked street after street, looking for suitable quarters in which to set up my prac- tice. The ghetto had not changed since I was in Mattersburg al1110st ten years before-it had probably remained un- changed for centuries-hut among the Illany peasant huildings in the main square I discovered a two-story build- ing with a grocer} store on the first floor and an apartment ahove. It was a modern apartment by lV1attershurg standards, and I took it at once, pa}- ing four months' rent in advance. T HE day my hlack na111eplate, let- tered in gold, was nailed on the entrance door, snow fen nlixed with icy rain, but my heart felt .:lS if it wt:re spring. Upstairs, I had divided the apartment into office and living quar- ters. The office was equIpped with the most modern tools and instruments, which I had arranged neatly in gray cd-hinets, and in a corner stood IllY X- ray 111achine. It was certainly the only one in a Burgenland doctor's office. Out in front of the huilding w.:lited my little Opel-Stcyr, which I had hought on the install111en t plan, like t:very- thing else. I was read) to receive pa- tien ts and to 111ake house cans. No one came on the first day, or the day after. l--hat was nothing, I thought-people must he given time to learn ahout the 1.rrival of a new doc- tor; and after office hours I made my introductory calls on the notahles in tow n: the priest, the rabhi, the super- intendent of the school. But the door- bell didn't ring the third day, or on the fourth or fifth da), either. 1 drove up the hills, where snoV\ had already settled on the tall fir trees. i\.t night, I ate dinner alone In the inn and walked home th rough pitch-dark streets without Ineeting a living soul. Until 111idnight, when the Vienna radio stopped broadcasting, ] listened to 111USIC. Exactly one week .Jfter I had be- gun practicing, I was caned to the house of mv first patient. Her name was Sonnenschein, and she lived on a hilJ in the last building of the ghetto. I can still see that little figure with its birdlike face sitting up in bed, wrapped in several blankets. She had a metastatic breast cancer, and I noted morphine ampules at the hed"ide table. \\Then I opened my bag and took out a syr- inge, she clutched the blankets to her. "Please, don't hurt me, Herr Doktor," she said. I gave her the injection. She took a deep breath "It did not